Wages of Coral Gables Firefighters and Other Cities: We’re Pretty Good

October 3, 2010 Leave a comment

I have constructed a short list of recent information on firefighter base salaries (exclude pensions and other benefits, overtime, etc.).  The wages are based on an annual survey of the Florida Professional Firefighter organization.  The full information can be found at their website.

We can draw some conclusions that  1) Coral Gables officers, lieutenants and captains and, by inference, chief and deputy chiefs, are very well paid compared to other cities and counties–we are very competitive, 2) Coral Gables firefighters start at a better salary than many other cities so we are competitive, 3) we know that the pension and health benefits are still more than competitive in Coral Gables especially as other cities cut back pensions, and 4) firefighters and their management earn wages that are equivalent to or higher than many other management and employee levels in our government.

Remember that in Coral Gables you multiply their basic compensation by 65 percent to get the current cost of pensions, and even that large value is underfunded by almost a factor of 50 percent. One may conclude that we are paying firefighters more than enough to attract people at even lower salaries and benefits as we compare them to other cities and counties. (An exception in the City of Miami where firefighter compensation was completely out of control until this year’s budget emergency.)

Filed under Coral Gables, Employees and Unions, Government

Private Employees vs. Public Employees w. Labor Unions

October 1, 2010 Leave a comment

There is a fair amount of public information  on the impact of public employee labor unions on the cost of state and local governments and comparisons of wages and benefits (pensions and health care) of private and public workers.

Here are some ideas about public employees and local and state labor unions.  (Remember, these is based on national and state-wide information, not Coral Gables in particular.)

  • Pensions and health plans are very underfunded (or “over promised”, if you will) across the nation in state and local governments;
  • On average, public employees’ wages and benefits are as much as 8 percent higher than the private sectors wages, but these are just average for all age groups and education levels;
  • Public employees on average are older as a group and have higher education attainments–so the reported wage and benefits difference are not that  great, although underfunded benefits are under-reported so you are not getting true measures of benefits for public employees.
  • And, to be fair, data across the nation show public employees receiving about 4 percent lower wages and benefits than private employees.  There is a small difference of 1% in favor of  private employees for the same age and education groups;
  • The rise of public sector unions in the last 20 to 30 years, and their ability to negotiate that has been extended by national and state laws and helped to increase salaries and benefits;
  • Labor unions have been large contributors to candidates for state and local government, and this has helped them leverage more local power into salaries and benefits;
  • A big difference between public and private employees is that public employees have much better pensions programs than private employees; they retire at an earlier age than the private sector (this allows for double dipping); they work fewer hours than in the private sector (isn’t that nice); and they often have inflation protection for their pension.
  • Some jobs in the private and public sectors are not comparable, especially, for public security.
  • Public employees have much better health plan coverage than private employees.
  • All benefits to public employees are really higher than the apparent budgeted values because the pension and health care funds are hugely underfunded.

What can we conclude:  public employees are well paid on average; their benefits are exceptional; they have great flexibility to retire early and take up another career; unions have had a disproportionate impact on wages and benefits for some groups like public security; taxpayers will be stuck with unfunded liabilities for a long time for no good reason; they have great health benefits; and they are politically resistant to reducing salaries and benefits.

I plan to report in more detail on some of these conclusions in coming days.

Filed under Employees and Unions

More Millage Rate Mumbo Jumbo (Language or Ritualistic Activity Intended to Confuse)

September 30, 2010 Leave a comment

This year we again heard more of the annual millage rate talk (alternatively, you may describe it as gibberish, double talk, gobbledygook, jabberwocky) in the annual budget hearing of the City of Coral Gables.  Depending on the direction–up or down–of spending and property values, the Director of Finance always, and I emphasize always, comments on the millage rate as “much lower than many other full-service cities”, “our rate is going done” or  “our rate is just 27 percent of your total taxes,” as if he was saying something substantive.

Why so much talk about the millage rate.

The millage rate is simply the result of dividing the assessed property values by the city budget–nothing more and nothing less.

How do you calculate the millage rate:  (1)  you decide how much money you need in the budget–this is a management and commission decision and it is the only relevant decision;  (2) you divide the amount you need (say, $78 million) by the total assessed property values (say $13 billion) to get the city’s share; and, voila, (3) you get the millage rate (adjust it to a rate per thousand dollars).  Therefore, the millage rate (the tax rate) is determined by the city budget request alone–everything else is out of the control of Coral Gables.

The City of Coral Gables Commissioners and Managers never discuss the budget in great detail during the Budget Hearings.  The commissioners’ questions, directed at management, are usually quite restrained.  There has been no real deep questioning about the number of employees and benefits, present or future capital spending, maintenance costs, vehicle costs, overtime, etc. and different ways of reducing spending and taxes significantly.  The taxpayers is not well represented in the process.

I quote from my last year’s post.

The city fathers do us no favor by having a lower or higher millage rate.  They do us a favor by better managing the city’s budget–that is [what] counts.

Filed under Coral Gables, Finance

Boca has a Long-Range Financial Plan

September 30, 2010 Leave a comment

Why can’t Coral Gables, City Beautiful, with its top-notch city manager, well-educated citizenry, with a world class university in our midst, prepare a long-range financial plan like that of Boca Raton.  I cannot judge the details of the plan, but it seems like a wonderful instrument to incorporate citizen participation and understanding of Coral Gables’ many financial issues.  It would provide a forum for an open and active review of the future of the city, rather than the annual hit-or-miss treatment of taxes, fees and spending.

The Long-Range Financial Plan of the City of Boca Raton is described as follows:

This Plan provides us with an opportunity to evaluate current policies and practices in order to  implement proactive strategies before critical fiscal strains impact the budget. The best informed, fiscally sensitive decisions will be those deliberated with their longer-term implications in mind. To that end, we annually update the Plan for the City Council.

We look forward to the day that the city of Coral Gables is capable of formulating an in depth long-range financial plan for plain view of all citizens.  Read some of the plan and you will be amazed that Boca Raton was sitting on $50 million in reserves at one time and has $10 million in hurricane response reserves!

Filed under Coral Gables, Finance

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